Version 1 of #3807

Not according to Deutsch. He says hard to vary is epistemologically fundamental, that all progress is based on it. For example, he phrases testability in terms of hard to vary (BoI chapter 1):

When a formerly good explanation has been falsified by new observations, it is no longer a good explanation, because the problem has expanded to include those observations. Thus the standard scientific methodology of dropping theories when refuted by experiment is implied by the requirement for good explanations.

For Deutsch, hard to vary is the key mode of criticism, not just one of many.